Lilium to go public in SPAC merger with Qell Acquisition Corp, also announces larger, seven-seater eVTOL aircraft

Lil­i­um has become the lat­est eVTOL air­craft devel­op­er to go pub­lic, after announc­ing a SPAC merg­er with Qell Acqui­si­tion Corp which is led by Bar­ry Engle, the for­mer pres­i­dent of Gen­er­al Motors North Amer­i­ca.

The trans­ac­tion val­ues the com­bined com­pa­ny at approx­i­mate­ly $3.3 bil­lion pro for­ma equi­ty val­ue at a $10 per share PIPE price. The total gross pro­ceeds are expect­ed to be about $830 mil­lion, includ­ing approx­i­mate­ly $380 mil­lion in cash cur­rent­ly held in trust and the pro­ceeds of a $450 mil­lion PIPE1 invest­ment.

Addi­tion­al­ly, this also includes invest­ments by Bail­lie Gif­ford, funds and accounts man­aged by Black­Rock, Ten­cent, Fer­rovial, LGT and its direct impact invest­ing arm Lightrock, Palan­tir, Atom­i­co, FII Insti­tute and pri­vate funds affil­i­at­ed with PIMCO.

The pro­ceeds from the trans­ac­tion will help fund the launch of com­mer­cial oper­a­tions which are planned for 2024. This includes the final­i­sa­tion of ser­i­al pro­duc­tion facil­i­ties in Ger­many, launch of ser­i­al pro­duc­tion air­craft and com­ple­tion of type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

As part of the SPAC merg­er, Engle will join Lil­i­um’s Board of Direc­tors — which also includes for­mer Air­bus CEO Tom Enders.

Enders said: “We are thrilled to be part­ner­ing with Lil­i­um to togeth­er build the leader in region­al elec­tric air mobil­i­ty. Qell set out to find an excep­tion­al and ambi­tious tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny, with sig­nif­i­cant growth poten­tial — and in Lil­i­um we have found that. Lil­i­um has unique tech­nol­o­gy and one of the most accom­plished engi­neer­ing and com­mer­cial teams in elec­tric avi­a­tion.

“The expe­ri­enced Qell lead­er­ship team is look­ing for­ward to work­ing with Lil­i­um. Our board has a col­lec­tive set of expe­ri­ences in grow­ing busi­ness­es, strength­en­ing oper­a­tions, expand­ing glob­al­ly, rais­ing cap­i­tal and cre­at­ing long-term val­ue.

“I have spent my career in mobil­i­ty and been part of the elec­tri­fi­ca­tion of the auto­mo­tive indus­try. The mar­ket and soci­etal poten­tial from the elec­tri­fi­ca­tion of air trav­el is enor­mous. I, and the whole team at Qell, are excit­ed for the impact Lil­i­um can have and the part we can play.”

As well as announc­ing its inten­tion to go pub­lic, Lil­i­um has also revealed its new sev­en-seater Lil­i­um Jet. It has pro­ject­ed cruise speed of 175mph at 10,000ft and a range of more than 155 miles plus reserves.

The air­craft is the cul­mi­na­tion of five years of tech­nol­o­gy devel­op­ment across four gen­er­a­tions of demon­stra­tors, includ­ing its full-scale five-seater eVTOL air­craft. Lil­i­um applied for con­cur­rent type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for a high-capac­i­ty air­craft with EASA and the FAA in 2018. In 2020, the 7‑Seater Lil­i­um Jet received CRI-A01 cer­ti­fi­ca­tion basis from EASA.

Lil­i­um has suc­cess­ful­ly devel­oped, test­ed and refined the under­ly­ing tech­nol­o­gy for elec­tric ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing jets – its pro­pri­etary Duct­ed Elec­tric Vec­tored Thrust (“DEVT”) tech­nol­o­gy, along with key con­trol sys­tems, air­craft and bat­tery archi­tec­ture. DEVT tech­nol­o­gy enables Lil­i­um to scale to high­er-capac­i­ty air­craft and keep noise emis­sions and ground foot­print low.

Daniel Wie­gand, Co-Founder and CEO, Lil­i­um, said: “We’re incred­i­bly excit­ed to reveal the devel­op­ment of our sev­en-seater Lil­i­um Jet and announce the next stage of our growth. This is a val­i­da­tion of all the hard work over the last five years from our tal­ent­ed team and our world-class part­ners and investors.

“Our vision is to cre­ate a sus­tain­able and acces­si­ble mode of high-speed trav­el and bring this to every com­mu­ni­ty. Trans­port infra­struc­ture is bro­ken. It is cost­ly in per­son­al time, space con­sump­tion and car­bon emis­sions. We are pur­su­ing our unique elec­tric jet tech­nol­o­gy because it is the key to high­er-capac­i­ty air­craft, with low­er cost per seat mile while deliv­er­ing low noise and low emis­sions.

“Today’s announce­ment brings us clos­er to launch­ing our pas­sen­ger ser­vice. In Qell, we have found a part­ner who shares our ambi­tion for sus­tain­able mobil­i­ty and brings tremen­dous expe­ri­ence in run­ning mobil­i­ty and hard­ware busi­ness­es.”

The sev­en-seater Lil­i­um Jet will be Lilium’s first air­craft to go into ser­i­al pro­duc­tion. In a press release, the com­pa­ny says its air­craft will have 30x few­er com­po­nents than a com­mer­cial air­lin­er and is designed for ease of man­u­fac­tura­bil­i­ty and scal­a­bil­i­ty.

It is part­ner­ing with world-class sup­pli­ers which includes Toray Indus­tries, pro­vid­ing the car­bon com­pos­ites for the aircraft’s pri­ma­ry struc­tures; Aci­tur­ri, man­u­fac­tur­ing the fuse­lage and wing sys­tems; and Lufthansa Avi­a­tion Train­ing, train­ing Lilium’s pilots.

To date, Lil­i­um has secured approx­i­mate­ly $200 mil­lion of com­mit­ments from infra­struc­ture part­ners, includ­ing Fer­rovial and Tavi­s­tock Devel­op­ment Com­pa­ny.

Up to 14 ver­ti­ports are already planned in Flori­da. Lil­i­um is also in advanced dis­cus­sions with key infra­struc­ture part­ners for 10 ver­ti­ports to build a net­work across Europe.